POLITICS
As a Poor Person, Not Having Children Is the Most Revolutionary Thing You Can Do
And by “poor,” I really mean the 99%
Recently, I stumbled upon yet another one of Elon Musk’s “please breed” statements. I didn’t ask for it, but it might have convinced me of the exact opposite of what he was trying to convince me of.
This is not the first time Musk has clutched some pearls about the upcoming population crisis. For all purposes, he might be right, and I honestly don’t care. Whether or not “the economy” maintains its steady growth based on infinite expansion, most people won’t feel its effects. But people like Musk will certainly feel the weight of having to send old folks to the lithium mines instead of children.
Don’t have kids if you’re poor, even if you want them. Do not give your rulers an infinitely resupplying source of cheap labor. Don’t do it if you’re middle class, either! If the poor stop reproducing, the rich will just try to exploit the next strata.
I know what I am saying, especially in the West, is something that goes against every ideal we’ve been raised to believe. I know many people will see this as a horrible thing to say and draw all kinds of unsavory historical parallels to this talking point. With that in mind, I’ll try to address these hypothetical concerns.
But isn’t that eugenics?
The short answer is no, and the long answer is… well, complicated. I want us to stop reproducing because I want exploitation to become impossible for the ruling class. It has nothing to do with the belief that humanity will be bettered by preventing “undesirables” from breeding or with the gradual eradication of “lesser races.”
That being said, I am aware this is still trying to eradicate the lower class in the slowest, least violent way possible. To the more philosophical of you, this might still qualify as eugenics or voluntary classicize. With this in mind, I must ask you whether the wording matters more than the cause itself.
I’m not trying to dress this as a way for the human race best to ensure their bloodline continues. All I want is that no child is born with the life of a miner already charted out for them just because of their parents’ poverty. I want our wealthiest to wonder, just once, if their child won’t have to struggle for a job now that there are fewer people to put in the meat grinder. If you want to call this “eugenics,” I won’t fault you, but I implore that you attack the cause rather than the label you attach to it.
What about freedom of choice?
Ah, westerners and the freedom of choice. I really wish I didn’t have such a deterministic outlook when this topic comes up. To me, there is no freedom, and there is no choice when class is concerned. Yes, two poor people can choose to have a child. That child, however, won’t have much of a choice with the class they will inherit and the life of toil and misery ahead of them.
Does this mean I want the police to march to poor homes and sterilize everyone inside? Not really. I’d much rather have our class consciousness grow to the point where poor people are systematically preventing themselves from reproducing, even if they want to have a child. I want us to suppress our urge to do what we want and instead do what we should.
Even if you love a hypothetical child of yours, think about them growing up in a ruthless, capitalist nightmare that has been accelerating for the past thirty years. If the thought of a son or daughter of yours being shoved into corporate slavery doesn’t dissuade you, nothing will.
But capitalism! We can just abolish capitalism instead!
I’m going to level with you, boys and girls. That communist revolution, or whatever else you are dreaming of, is not coming. We’re raking the coals of an ideology that died last century, and it was an ugly death.
The closest thing the world has to a communist revolution is a large terrorist group in India whose main achievement has been keeping the country’s infrastructure underdeveloped. China is about to surpass the US in the number of billionaires. Even if Putin wins the war in Ukraine and suddenly restores Russia’s old borders against all of NATO, it will be closer to the Russian Empire than to the Soviet Union. No words are needed on North Korea. I can praise Cuba and its education and healthcare, but even then, the cracks are showing due to the prevalence of neoliberalism.
Meanwhile, American oligarchs are preparing to colonize Mars and increase their grasp on social media and news outlets. You can repeat “late-stage” until your last breath, but capitalism has proven far more versatile than any ideology before or after it.
Left-wing politics in the West have dwindled to anarcho-liberalism and social democracy intent on preserving much of the capitalist machine that runs the world today. “Theory” is safely confined to universities and does nothing but hamper young people’s development when they take it to Twitter.
Right-wing populism, for all its talk about revolting against the system, doesn’t even have a theory to stand on. It doesn’t threaten capitalism as much as it threatens liberalism with reactionary social policies.
Inside and outside the West, capitalism is closing in. It has no foes, it has few friends, and people just bear with its existence. The main choice given to us is pulling the plug and stopping the exploitation with the only thing that is still ours: our ability to create life.
